Fire and Water
by northcaroline
Summary: "It's strangely comforting, to realize that in a long period of despair for the both of them, they had each other, if only for a moment." Speculation, post-Stowaway.


Title: Fire and Water  
Pairing: Peter/Olivia  
Rating: T  
Summary: "It's strangely comforting, to realize that in a long period of despair for the both of them, they had each other, if only for a moment." Speculation, post-Stowaway.  
Spoilers: Up to "Stowaway."  
Disclaimer: I do not pretend to own _Fringe_.

Peter strips down to his boxers before hauling open the tank doors.

"Peter, I can't let you do this," Walter begs, but his son is already peeling the backs off of electrodes and sticking them to his body.

"Oh, we're doing this, Walter." He rummages through the cabinets to find the drugs he's looking for, before handing them, a syringe, and the Synaptic Transfer device to his father.

"Please—"

"This was _your_ insane idea. _You _went along with this. And now your dead friend is dead again, and the woman I love is in a coma. Do you have any better ideas?"

Walter hangs his head and shakes it. "No."

"All right, then." He looks at Walter expectantly, turning around to present his neck for the connection. Standing there, nearly naked in the lab, he should be freezing, but his blood is almost boiling with frustration and rage. It's been three days, and he'll do anything to get Olivia back.

Peter is not only afraid that Olivia won't wake up, but that when she does, he'll learn he's broken her heart. Walter has nothing if not terrible timing, and Peter can't stop thinking about Olivia, stuck in the confines of her hijacked mind, memory frozen to the moment right before the bell rang, where she learned his worst, most harrowing secret.

This pain hurts far worse than the sting of Walter implanting the Synaptic Transfer device. Astrid is doing the same thing to Olivia, hooking her up to all kinds of machines. Peter just watches, angry at the sight of Olivia's limp, pallid body.

Walter keeps talking about how much Bell must have _trusted_ Olivia, to use her as the vessel for his "soul magnets." Peter just thinks it's rude. He trusts Olivia more than anything, but he'd never do anything so selfish. It is with this thought that he climbs into the tank, sinking into the cold water.

He regrets the choice, momentarily, as Astrid slams the doors shut above him. Peter doesn't have clear memories of the two times he nearly drowned as a child, but a tense combination of hydrophobia and claustrophobia hits him as the metal doors close with a clang so powerful, the water ripples. Peter is reminded of just how much time Olivia has spent in this tank, doing this exact same exercise, and he grits his teeth in defiance.

He can do this for her.

Peter closes his eyes and waits for the drugs to kick in.

They do, eventually. Peter falls asleep, and for a brief period, it's comfortably hazy down there. He's asleep and floating gently in the water in a dark, dreamless sleep. Like the best kind of Sunday afternoon nap.

This doesn't last, though. Suddenly, Peter is jolted awake in a gray wasteland. It's dark and cold, but humid. Windy. He's wearing a puffy blue jacket, which he pulls closer to his body, calling out for Olivia. A zeppelin crosses the sky, but she is nowhere to be found.

His reality jogs itself a few times, like a skipping DVD trying to get to the next frame. He turns around and around, searching her out, scanning the vast nothing for her face, for the sound of her voice. Anything. For some reason, the horizon seems to spread an even further distance here, and Peter feels very alone. It's a feeling he'd been used to for so long, but one that he's grown unaccustomed to in recent years. _He doesn't miss it._

"Olivia! I'm here—where are you?" he hollers.

He spins around one last time, and suddenly, from the desert, an unending field of flowers has erupted. In the distance, he spots an unmistakable figure—Olivia Dunham, sitting on the ground, surrounded by white flowers—tulips, he believes.

Peter approaches her calmly, only calling for her when he's close enough to say it without yelling. She looks up at him, but doesn't say anything at first. Even though he knows it's not real, Peter is thrilled just to see her face—with her eyes and her heart and her _soul_. He sinks down beside her, but doesn't dare to touch her yet.

She snaps her head up to look at him, asking, "How did you find me?"

"Does it matter?" he asks. He shrugs his jacket off and lays it over her bare shoulders.

She watches him for a moment. She can feel just how much he loves her, but when their eyes meet again, hers are filled with tears.

"Olivia, I need you to come back with me. You can't stay here."

She shakes her head firmly. "I'm not going anywhere with you," she says, resolute.

"Please—"

She crosses her arms over her chest and turns toward him, that fierce expression in her eye. "Do you have any idea how hard it was for me?"

"Hmm?"

"Peter, I thought things were over between us, I really did. Getting over what she did to me … what she did to _us-_it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. But I did it. I did it so that we could be together. And for what? So that the world could keep trying to pull us apart? So that you could continue to keep things from me? Maybe we were never meant to be together."

"You know that's not true." She's obviously had a lot of time to think down here. To meditate on everything that's gone wrong for them, and everything that could go wrong.

"Isn't it? It's like it's constantly out of our reach, Peter."

"Sweetheart, I'm right here," he says, and reaches out to touch her. She shivers at the brush of his hand against hers, wanting him to hold her and afraid that he will. How can she ever deny him anything, when just the touch of his hand can make her heart beat faster?

(Literally, it makes her heart beat faster. Walter catalogs the electric spike on the EKG.)

"Olivia," he says, weightily, bringing her gaze back to his. "If I had known what it was like to really be with you—to touch you and hold you and make love to you—I would have known in a second that she wasn't you. Everything with you is … so much better. Than anything I've _ever_ had."

She smiles, but it doesn't really reach her eyes. She wants to believe him, and she _does_, but there's a part of her that wants to protect herself from him, from the power he has over her. From the power he holds to hurt her.

"We need to go home," Peter says, finally. "Look, I know it seems like we'll never get it right, but we _will_. I've never wanted to try with anyone but you. I'm not ready to stop trying, Livia."

"But … can't we just stay _here_, just the two of us? We can be together here, we're safe. This is like a _dream._"

"As much as I would like that, we really can't. We deserve to have a _life_ together," he says, cupping her cheek in his palm. He's encouraged when she leans into his hand, pressing a kiss there. "And we can't do that here." He wraps an arm around her, holding her close.

"You know," he says, trying to lighten the mood, "I could keep giving you reasons, but the only one that matters is that you have to come back because _you belong with me_." He runs his fingers through her hair gently, kissing her temple.

For the first time, she smiles. "Now _that_ I know for sure." She curls into the curve of his body, as if she knows this is one of the last moments of peace they'll have. "Peter, where are we, anyway?"

He looks away. This isn't exactly the time to withhold information from her, but he doesn't really want to get into the physics of their current situation, either.

Before he can decide how to respond, she continues. "I mean, it feels so familiar. Have we been here before?"

"I don't think so…" he trails off, but it reminds him … this _does _feel uncannily familiar. And it's as if that realization triggers another and another and another, until ….

He grips her hand, and as he does, the tulips around them wilt and die. Snow begins to fall around them. A powerful memory pushes itself to the surface of their subconscious minds and hits them both at once.

She flinches, almost dropping his hand, but he just grabs hers tighter. They stare at each other, bewildered and afraid, but united. He can picture her as she was at seven years old now, all blond hair and wide eyes. Their eyes well with tears and he reaches to touch her face, where he knows a dark, angry bruise once resided.

"Oh, Olivia—" he murmurs.

The memory is painful for Olivia, for the first time allowing herself to recall the abuse, the tests, the _fires_. But she also feels Peter's warmth, the same naïve affection she knew all those years ago. She doesn't entirely trust the memory, wondering if it's just a shared creation of their minds, two souls struggling to invent even just one scene of perfect, innocent happiness for themselves.

But something about it feels so real, and although their minds are glossy down in this shared dream state, it makes sense that they could have spent time together. Makes sense that they could have shared in their brokenness. It's strangely comforting, to realize that in a long period of despair for the both of them, they had each other, if only for a moment.

It makes her want to hold on to the moments they have now.

He kisses her, full of promise and passion. The scene reflects the flood of thoughts and memories flowing through their minds, but as he moves his hands to her back to pull her closer, a move so familiar and so affectionate, everything else just falls away, until it is just them, alone in a field of white tulips.

For the second time in their lives.

"I love you," she says.

"I love you."

He is ripped away from her in an instant, coming to in the tank as Walter throws open the doors. Peter flings the equipment off as he clambers out of the tank, running over to where she's lying, reclined in the exam chair. Her eyelids are fluttering, and he squeezes her hand, hard.

"Come on, baby, wake up," he whispers. He's soaking wet and dripping all over her, still in just his underwear, but it's the least of his worries. "_Please._"

Then she gasps for breath and leaps forward, eyes wide.

Peter is all she sees, and all she wants to see.

He catches her, wrapping his arms around her tightly. Hers go around his shoulders, holding on with everything she has. After a moment, he has to check, and he pulls back just enough so that he can look into her eyes. When he meets hers, he _knows_.

These are the eyes he's been looking into for the last three years.

These are the eyes he saw all those years ago, glistening with tears for a childhood sacrificed.

For the first time in nearly a week, he smiles.

Gingerly, Olivia reaches to the back of her head, feeling the Synaptic Transfer near the base of her skull. Her face falls immediately, for the first time noticing how naked Peter is.

"Oh, Peter, what did you do?" she asks, afraid. Embarrassed by the measures he's obviously gone to.

In response, he kisses her, running his thumb along her chin.

"You gotta try _something_, right?"


End file.
